Loopers - The latest movie on a Phillip K D*ck theme? For the past 30 years or so, a lot of sci-fi movies have been living in the Phil D*ck universe...Blade Runner, Scanner Darkly, Screamers, Imposter, Total Recall, Minority Report, The Adjustment Bureau are directly lifted from his stories and many other inhabit his universe of dysfunctional future technology, authoritarian governments, warped time, distorted and virtual reality and noir-like characters.
This latest one, Loopers, doesn't acknowlege any connection to Phillip. In Loopers gangsters send intended victims back in time to be killed. When a hit man is to be "retired", he is sent back to be killed by himself at an earlier age (the "Looper"). In this case the character played by Bruce Willis (Old Joe) is sent back to be killed by young Joe (Joseph Gordon Levitt) and endangers a kid who proves to be very important in the future. As the body count rises (it's a very violent movie) there are a lot of twists in the various time travel conundrums. One might notice the similarity to The Skull, a PD story where a hit man travels back in time to kill a man who might change the world; the intended victim turns out to be the hit man himself. The Loopers is a much more complex story than The Skull (which is a simple short story), but as soon as I saw the trailer, I could not help but think of the 1953 Phil D*ck story.
I thought the movie was excellent, although the female viewers found it to be too bloody. It's definitly a sci-fi movie that bears a lot of thought and possibly a second viewing. It's not a simple story. The future looks pretty grim (dominated by gangster-governments, ruin and desperate poverty), but there is implied hope at the end, although it's subtle and you will not actually see it. Gordon-Levitt is excellent as young Joe, as is Willis as old Joe. Emily Blunt is quite good as a fearsome mom, trying to defend her rural, climate-altered Kansas home (Kansas has cane fields) and her "special" son in a very scary, violent world, finding herself as the undeserving target of gang operation from the future.
If you like this sort of sci-fi, have liked other PD inspired stories, this one should not be missed.